Attribute #18– The re-creating God

43)    Meditation:

Psalm 51:10 God, create a clean heart for me and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

What is wonderful about this attribute:
Sin had so destroyed David that he had to call in none other than the Creator Himself. He had wreaked such devastation and destruction within himself that only one who can call a universe into being by a single word is capable of the kind of restoration he needed. The same is true for us.

In our natural thinking it does not seem like sin does that much damage. It seems like our sin is just a slip-up, and all that is needed is for us to be more careful next time (as if sin were like a mere mistake). But the truth is, when we sin there is a bomb that detonates inside our soul and the devastation that results – especially the damage done to our affections – is staggering. After the detonation we desire God and His Word less, sin is more attractive to us, heaven seems like a distant, irrelevant mirage; righteousness losses its appeal, the world gets big and God gets small in our eyes. The city of our heart becomes so decimated that the only chance of restoration is the Creator Himself.

But God is not only the Creator but the re-Creator. He repairs what is broken and “restores the years the locust have eaten” (that is, He undoes the damage inflicted by His own judgment). That is not to say the damage is a small matter. When the bomb goes off the damage is exceedingly painful, and the restoration may be a long time in coming; but when it does come there is never a life so devastated that God cannot fully redeem it and make it beautiful. He makes all things beautiful in His time.

What effect would it have on your heart if you were to consciously experience the re-creating grace of God today?
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Experiencing this attribute:
David experienced the attribute of God’s re-Creation by beseeching God for it. In one of the most earnest, desperate prayers ever recorded David begs God for it as if it were the only thing that mattered to him. The damage and devastation in your life can be redeemed – not just patched up or turned toward some small good, but fully restored into something more beautiful than it ever was before. When we turn our lives into rubble God delights to glorify Himself by showing His re-Creative attribute. The more hopeless the mess, the greater the glory when He redeems it.

But that glory is marred and obscured if He brings that restoration in a context in which it will not be obvious where the restoration came from. And so very often God withholds the restoration until we cry out to Him with the kind of desperation David had in Psalm 51, so that when the restoration comes there is no chance at all that we will believe the lie that we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps, or that the instruments God used to restore us (other people, circumstances, etc.) were the source of our restoration.

Help me remember, dear Lord, the damage I inflict upon myself when I sin. Create a new heart in me right now, dear Lord. I set off multiple bombs in recent days. Create my heart anew this morning. Restore the image of You that I have so marred. Demolish the ruined affections and rebuild godly affections. Tear down fleshly, temporal fear and rebuild fear of You. Remove idolatrous/adulterous loves, and rebuild faithful love for You alone. Wipe away reliance on worthless human wisdom and restore full confidence in Your wisdom alone. Oh blessed exchange! Love for love, wisdom for wisdom, affection for affection, fear for fear – in each case the worthless for the priceless. What an amazing thing that I can even ask for this! For free no less! You are such a rich, wealthy, generous, gracious God!

Think: Think of a recent sin that has damaged your affections (made God seem less attractive and spending time with Him less desirable – or that made His truth more difficult to believe). Think carefully and thoroughly about the damage done by that bomb, and about the magnitude of miracle it would take to undue the damage of the explosion. Then pray hard for that restoration. Take some time also to revel in and enjoy the amazing works of restoration God has already done in your life.

Promise to trust today:
Joel 2:25 I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten … my great army that I sent among you.

1 Peter 5:10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.

Write your own prayer:

Attribute #17– The God who thoroughly cleanses us

42)    Meditation:

Psalm 51:3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. 5 Behold! I was guilty when I was born; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.

How massive is our guilt before God! We are shot through with sin at a level that is not at all superficial. It goes back to the core of who we are. It was in our spiritual DNA from the very start. It is a virus that has infected every cell of our being.
David’s prayer here was not for removal of the consequences; he just begged to be clean.

Psalm 51:1b, 2 …according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

What is wonderful about this attribute:
The reason it is important for us to understand the enormity of our guilt is so we can have insight into the vastness of God’s mercy and the staggering amount of grace that is poured out on us when we are forgiven.

Sin is defiling. The Old Testament pictures associate sin with the most disgusting things there are – excrement, a decaying corpse, leprous boils, and all the grossest, most sickening things there are. Sin is filthy to think of, filthy to talk about, filthy to desire, filthy to do. It is utterly detestable and offensive to God, and it contaminates your entire being.
But God takes all that and makes us whiter than snow. Snow is already completely white. How could something be whiter that white? God makes us so pure that only hyperbole can describe it. He makes you pure like the snow – not just white on the surface; you can dig down as far as you want into snow and it is just as white.

What effect would it have on your heart if you were to consciously experience God’s cleansing grace today?
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Experiencing this attribute:
The way to experience deep and thorough cleansing from God is the same way David did – by desperately and earnestly crying out to God for it. The reference to hyssop points to the divinely-prescribed method of seeking cleansing from God (through the death of a sacrifice offered in your place). We must abandon all illusions that our efforts to cleanse ourselves are worth anything. Only God can cleanse us. That is not to suggest we are to put forth no effort. Just the opposite! We are to put for the greatest possible effort, but that effort must be wholehearted seeking after God, not an attempt to redeem ourselves from past sin.

We will seek hard after cleansing from God only when we 1) are convinced of the enormity of our guilt, and 2) when we truly believe His great and precious promises about forgiveness. It is good to think deeply and often about the cross, because the enemy is forever trying to whisper in our ear: Your sin is too big, too ugly, too frequent, too inexcusable to be forgiven. And our sin is so big, ugly, frequent, and inexcusable that we will be persuaded by that lie unless we have a good grasp of the unfathomable price that was paid.

Lord, the dye of my sin is the most indelible there is, and I have laid in it for so long it has soaked into every part of me. I am filthy to the core of my being and need the deepest kind of cleansing. Scrub and scrub and scrub, dear Lord, until I am clean. And like David, teach me to long for true cleanness. Don’t let me be content merely with clean clothes, like the hypocrite. Teach me to be satisfied with nothing less than cleanness of heart.

Open my eyes to the filthiness of sin. Show me how severely I have defiled myself, and how vile and loathsome is my sin, that I am more concerned with cleansing than with mere relief from earthly consequences.

Think: In your case, which is in most need of being deepened – your awareness of your guilt, your awareness of the promises of cleansing, or your understanding of the vastness of the price Jesus paid and His ability to more than cover your guilt?

Promise to trust today:
Psalm 51:7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.

Write your own prayer:

Attribute #16– The God who forgives through Jesus’ Intercession

41)    Meditation:

Psalm 51:7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

9 Turn Your face away from my sins and blot out all my guilt.

The hyssop branch was used to sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice. David knows that the death of an animal does not actually cover the sin (v.16). David was looking not to the ritual, but to the actual act of divine cleansing of which the ritual was a picture.

What is wonderful about this attribute:
We understand that the real atonement (payment, covering, cleansing, and forgiveness) of our sin comes through the death of Jesus Christ, but the application of that atonement is not automatic. Just as the blood of the animal had to be applied in a specific way (hyssop), so Jesus’ blood must be applied to us in a specific way.  The hyssop that applies the blood of Jesus’ sacrifice to our specific sin is the current, present tense intersession that Jesus Christ is carrying on right now before the Father on your behalf.

1 John 2:1-2 My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father– Jesus Christ the righteous One. 2 He Himself is the propitiation for our sins

The word “propitiation” points to Jesus as both the priest who offers the sacrifice and the lamb who is the sacrifice. And the word “advocate” points to Jesus’ work as an intercessor between us and God in which He pleads for our forgiveness on the basis of His own sacrifice on our behalf.

Why does Jesus have to constantly plead our case before the Father? Is the heart of God the Father toward us different from Jesus’ heart? Is the Father reluctant to forgive while the Son is more merciful? No! Their desires and nature and will are all identical. The reason God has chosen to apply the blood of Christ to our sin only through the specific pleading of Jesus Christ on our behalf is this: the Father wants all of His mercy toward us to be given as an expression of love to the Son. The most important thing is not for us to be forgiven. The most important thing is for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to be exalted and glorified. And so God has made it so that the only way mercy can ever come to us is if it comes from the Father as a favor to the Son. That way the main issue in our salvation is not God’s love for us, but the Father’s love for the Son, who is utterly worthy of love and favor.

And so when Jesus pleads your case, the Father hears and accepts Jesus’ pleading willingly and eagerly and enthusiastically and with great joy and delight in His heart.

Thank You, dear Lord, for Your willingness and eagerness to forgive! Thank you for blotting out my sin instead of blotting out my name!

What effect would it have on your heart if you were to consciously experience Jesus’ intercession and the Father’s eager acceptance of it today?
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Experiencing this attribute:
The condition for receiving forgiveness and cleansing is repentance – turning from the darkness back to the light. That involves confession (acknowledgement of the truth about God and about your own sin), and a wholehearted embracing of God’s way (which is accompanied by a deep grieving and brokenness over having offended and dishonored God, and resolve to close the doors to that sin).

1 John 1:6-9 If we say, “We have fellowship with Him,” and walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say, “We have no sin,” we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Psalm 51:16-17 You do not want a sacrifice, or I would give it; You are not pleased with a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. God, You will not despise a broken and humbled heart.

Whenever you confess your sin remember – the only reason your request can (and will) be granted is because of the exuberant, enthusiastic, infinite love the Father has for the Son; and because of how utterly deserving Jesus is to have His requests on your behalf granted (as well as because of Jesus’ willingness to make those requests on your behalf).

Remember also that Jesus did not die just to forgive your sin. He also died to prevent it. According to Titus 2:11 He died to purify a people of His very own who are eager to do what is good. Whenever you confess your sins and are reminded of Jesus’ work of intercession on your behalf, let that motivate you toward that eagerness to become what He gave His life for you to become.

Think: Satan’s plan is to discourage you with your sin by keeping the entire focus on you, not on Christ. When your works reproach you, turn your attention to His works!

Promise to trust today:
1 John 2:1-2 My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father– Jesus Christ the righteous One. 2 He Himself is the propitiation for our sins

Write your own prayer:

Attribute #15– The God who forgives for His name’s sake

40)    Meditation:

Psalm 25:10 All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant. 11 For the sake of your name, O LORD, forgive my iniquity, for it is great.

What is wonderful about this attribute:
Note the word “for” in verse 11. It is because, not in spite of, the magnitude of his guilt that David sets forth as the reason why God should show mercy.

The reason God forgives is for the sake of His name. If God forgave for lesser reasons He would not be as glorious. If He forgave out of fear of man or out of laziness in not wanting to deal with sin or out of some façade or pretence that a relationship is something that it is not – all that would be evil. That is often the way we “forgive.” But God’s forgiveness is never out of any motive other than the highest and best – His own glory.

This is why the logic of grace is so counter to the logic of works. Our prideful, human reasoning would expect something like, “Please forgive me because my sin is small” or “Please forgive me even though my sin is great.” But it says neither. It says, “Forgive because my sin is great”! The greater your need the greater your occasion to request mercy from God. And the greater your sin the greater God’s glory when He forgives it.

What effect would it have on your heart if you were to consciously experience God’s self-interested forgiveness today?
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Experiencing this attribute:
Obviously the wrong way to experience this attribute would be to sin more so that His name will be honored more. While His forgiveness of sins brings Him great honor, our committing the sins brings Him great dishonor. The right way to experience this attribute is to 1) understand the logic of grace, 2) gain an understanding of the magnitude of your sinfulness and guilt, and 3) trust Him to act according to the logic of grace.

1) The Logic of Grace
The logic of merit would think, “The greater the sin the less of a position I am in to request mercy.” The logic of grace thinks like David: “The greater the sin problem the more dire my circumstance which means the more of a candidate I am for mercy.” Any time you have an impulse that makes you reluctant to seek mercy and grace from God, realize that you have a drastically warped and incorrect understanding of the nature of God, and run to His Word to correct that.

2) Pray for insight into the greatness of your own guilt.
He who has been forgiven much loves much. Once we learn the logic of grace, the two factors that will cause us to seek earnestly after mercy will be our awareness of how great our sin is and our desire to see God’s name glorified.

Lord, show me the greatness of my sin. Help me to be able to see it even in times when I’ve not done something other people see as scandalous. Help me to understand the enormity of my guilty and the evil within me every day.

How great is my iniquity before You! Every sin I commit is a great evil because it is committed against such a great God. Every one of my sins is a sin against great holiness and great goodness and great power and great mercy and great patience. The longer You have been patient with me the greater the evil when I prey on that patience and use it as an occasion for further evil.

My sin is great because it is sin against great light and revelation. You have shown me so much from Your Word; You have revealed to me so much of Your glory – that for me to sin against You is to sin from a position of enlightenment, which makes my sin great indeed. To prefer garbage to Your glory is bad enough, but to have a grand view of Your glory and then to prefer garbage dishonors You a hundred times more.

My sin is great because of my continuance in it. I confess it and return to it, confess it and return, confess and return – day after day, week after week, year after year. The clinging of my soul to evil shows my evil to be exceedingly great. Moderate evil might stumble into occasional sin. But it takes great evil to cling and continue and lean toward sin year after year.
My sin is great because of the frequency and number of my sins. I sin continuously. I have sinned the same sin against You thousands of times. My sins, piled up, would make an unscalable mountain.

My sin against You is great because I have done so much of it in the face of resolutions not to. I have committed to make changes, and then have returned to my sin. I have sinned against my very baptism – that day when I publicly resolved to forsake sin.
My sin is great because of how it reigns in my heart. In many cases I have voluntarily re-enslaved myself to sins from which You had already freed me. I have turned to them as my master, preferring them over You as a master!

My sin is great because of its source. The fact that it springs from deep within me – from my very heart, makes my condition exceedingly evil. If I relax and stop fighting tenaciously, and I just follow my impulses for a while and do whatever I feel like doing – I do things that lead away from You. Prone to wander Lord I feel it; prone to leave the Lord I love.

My sin is great because it aids and abets Your greatest enemy’s attacks against Your name. I know that pain of having my friends join with my enemies. Lord, so often I have done that against You!

My sin is great because of how much it has hurt others and even drawn others into sin – compounding the dishonor to Your name.
My sin is shown to be great because of the level of Your wrath against it. It is exposed as great because of the greatness of the price that had to be paid for it.

Have mercy on me dear Lord, for my sin is great. I am an ideal candidate for You to display Your mercy dear Lord, because of the exceeding wickedness within me. I do not come pleading based on my merits, but on Your mercy. Lord, You who are called merciful – be to me what You are called. Make good Your promise of forgiveness and restoration from sin to this sinner – for the sake of Your fame and renown and for the glory of Your great name; forgive my great sin and deliver me from it Lord.

Even while praying this very prayer, the prayer is contaminated by sin in my heart. My greatest acts of piety need to be repented of. And yet You accept me and make promises apply to me so that I can have faith in Your faithfulness to those promises. Lord, You are so gracious and kind!

Lord, I rejoice in the fact that You have made forgiveness of my sin a matter that is connected to Your own glory. If it were not, what hope could I have for forgiveness? You have no interest in doing things that bring no glory to Your name. And so the only way I could ever enjoy Your mercy is if You design things in such a way as to connect my receipt of Your mercy with the glorification of Your own name. And that is what You’ve done! I bless Your name Oh glorious God.

Now, teach me to experience this and enjoy it more. Teach me to understand the wonder of it far more than I do. I like the thought of it now, after a time of meditation. But in my day to day living my thoughts about Your forgiveness are so abstract and theoretical – they have very little effect on me. Lord, open my eyes that I might see and enjoy Your name-glorifying forgiveness even with a moment’s thought.

3) Trust Him to forgive for His name’s sake!
Never blaspheme God by assuming He will not follow through on His promises.

Think: Have you downplayed your own guilt – either in your own mind or before others, in order to save face? If so remember, the less serious you make your sin and guilt the less motive God has to be merciful. One reason why it is important to confess not only to God but also to one another is so others can see how merciful God is being when He forgives you.

Promise to trust today:
1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Isaiah 43:25 I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.

Write your own prayer:

WITH REGARD TO OUR SIN

Attribute #14– Compassion toward Sinners

39)    Meditation:
Psalm 51:1-2 A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had come to Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

What is wonderful about this attribute:
Before David even mentions his sin he appeals to God’s mercy, love and compassion. His eyes are fixed on God’s nature. Oh, what a beautiful and welcome sight is the Lord’s mercy to the broken sinner! God’s forgiveness is a function of His compassion. He is motivated to show mercy because He feels compassion inside His heart for us. Our sin offends, angers, and repulses God; but it also generates real sympathy in His heart as He sees the horrible disease with which we have infected ourselves. God actually feels sorry for us because of our plight of having to be the object of His displeasure!

David appeals to God’s great compassion. His love and mercy and compassion are so vast, so deep, so high, so wide – though your sins outnumber the hairs on your head, His mercy outnumbers the stars in the sky. It is vast both in quality and quantity. He shows mercy over and over and over as we keep repeating our sins. And the depth of His compassion reaches far beneath even the lowest and most base of our sinful motives and rises far above even the highest, most scandalous evils.
The pain of guilt is a marvelous gift and an important key to joy, because the more broken we are over our sin the more delight we take in His mercy. It enables us to receive it as the priceless treasure that it is.

What effect would it have on your heart if you were to consciously experience God’s compassion toward sinners today?
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Experiencing this attribute:
David appealed to God to act toward David in accordance with His compassion. There is a time of chastisement and consequence for sin during which God deals with us more according to His displeasure than His compassion. And part of what may bring that time to an end sooner rather than later is a heartfelt appeal such as David makes here. It is a good thing to plead with God to deal with us according to mercy and compassion in a time when we have provoked Him to deal harshly with us.

We will not do so, however, unless we have a sense that God is indeed displeased and dealing harshly with us. To experience the sweetness of restoration we must feel the sting of broken fellowship. When we sin against God it is important that we interpret the resulting distance from the nearness of His presence for what it is – the expression of God’s displeasure over our sin. When we seek after Him in prayer and do not receive the joy and peace and delight that come from the nearness of His presence, it should sober us to think that He has turned His face away. It is easy to endure pain when at the same time you are enjoying close fellowship with God and the experience of His presence. But pain that comes as a result of God’s displeasure is excruciating. And when we interpret it for what it is, we will cry out in heartfelt desperation for God to cut short the time of discipline and once again let His compassion be the dominant aspect of His dealings with us.

Another way to experience God’s compassion is to let that very compassion flow through you to others. When we see people sin we must be filled with compassion toward them. There is a place for righteous anger, but we know our anger is not righteous if it is devoid of genuine feelings of compassion toward the sinner.

Think: Scripture teaches God is mostly pleased with His children, yet there are times when He is displeased. Have you fallen into the rut of thinking God is always (or never) displeased with you? Compared to most of the time, how do you think God feels toward you right now?

Promise to trust today:
Isaiah 30:15-19 This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it. … 18 Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!  19 O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help!

Isaiah 54:7-8 “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. 8 In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,” says the LORD your Redeemer.

James 5:11 The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

Write your own prayer:

Attribute #13—The Cause of all good desires

38)    Meditation:
1 John 2:15-16 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world–the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes and the boasting of life–comes not from the Father but from the world.

What is wonderful about this attribute:
The reason we are not to love this world is because the desires involved in doing so are from the world and not from God. One might have expected John to say that such desires are from the flesh or from ourselves. But John only seems to recognize two possible causes of our desires: the world or God. Each time you have a desire, that desire exists because of something God said that you believed or because of something the world said that you believed.

Worldliness is not mainly an issue of behavior. It is a value system in the heart. The unbelieving culture gives you messages designed to persuade you of the value of temporal things apart from God. Happiness will come from a car. Joy is a product of recreation. Having a relationship with some wonderful person of the opposite sex will satisfy the appetites of your soul. When you watch enough of their commercials, and immerse yourself deeply enough in their conversations, and read enough of their magazines or websites, or spend enough time window shopping in their malls – over time your soul will be persuaded by their message: Yes! Joy is to be found in temporal things in and of themselves. And when you indulge those desires and experience pleasure as a result, you confirm and solidify that belief in a very powerful way. Each time you experience pleasure by indulging worldly desires you preach a powerful, persuasive sermon to your soul that says: “Temporal things really are the source of satisfaction of the soul.”

The other possible cause of desire that John mentions is God. God also gives us messages about what will satisfy the cravings of the soul. He tells us that fellowship with Him is the only thing that can satisfy the appetites of the soul, and that the pleasures of this world, apart from nearness to Him, are shallow and ultimately unsatisfying and pain-producing. And when we are persuaded of those messages the result is a different set of desires. We will crave the experience of nearness to Him.

The fact that desires are not built in to you, but are a product of outside sources is wonderful news! It means you are not stuck with your current set of desires. You are not doomed to a life of saying “no” to your desires and forcing yourself to do things you don’t desire. That is not the Christian life. The successful Christian life is to have good desires, and then for God to give you the desires of your heart.

What effect would it have on your heart if you were to consciously experience God as Giver of good desires today?
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Experiencing this attribute:
If godly desires are a product of being persuaded of the messages from God about what is good, the obvious way to experience that is to do all you can to be persuaded of those messages. Expose yourself to them every day. Listen to preachers present them in persuasive ways. And don’t forget the experiential aspect. Your flesh did not become persuaded to believe the world’s message through arguments alone. The arguments get you to try some worldly delight, and when that thing results in sensations of pleasure – that is what cements the belief in your heart that this thing really is a source of joy. Use that same strategy for good desires. When you have experiences of the presence of God that are delightful, make much of that in your mind. Make sure you draw the connection in your heart between the joy (or comfort, courage, strength, rest, peace, etc.) that you feel and the presence of God. It will do no good to experience peace or joy and assume it’s just because you got a good night’s sleep or because of some favorable circumstances. Realize that any joy you feel is because of His presence. Use that to preach to your soul about the supreme value of the grace of God.

Think: What is the most persuasive avenue the world has into your life that persuades you to desire what the world offers? Friends? Commercials? Internet? The Mall? A habit? Or something else?

Promise to trust today:
Psalm 37:4 Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Write your own prayer:

The Father of compassion and the God of all comfort (contd)

37)    Meditation 3: Why it’s so important to find comfort

2 Corinthians 1:3-5 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.

What is wonderful about this attribute:
Very often when you receive comfort from God it comes through the love and faithfulness of some person who is being used by God. And it is a delightful experience indeed to be the person God uses for that purpose. The deepest kind of joy comes from being the pipeline through which God’s grace flows to those who are in need.

This is one reason why it is so important that you find comfort from God when you are suffering. You must succeed in finding comfort in order to be able to show others the way to comfort. Sometimes we read the passage above and assume that the mere fact that we have been through a certain kind of suffering means we will automatically be able to comfort others who go through it. That is not the case. If you go through some suffering and do not find comfort from God in it, you will not be able to comfort others who go through it. If all you do is find ways to mask the pain for a time, then that is all you will be able to help others do. It is essential that you find true comfort from God Himself during your suffering so you can lead the way for others to find what you found.

This is another reason why suffering is such a gift. When we try to help people find comfort in their suffering, very often we come up with solutions that are not especially helpful. They sound to us like they should work, but in reality they just don’t. And when they don’t we are prone to either blame the suffering person, or throw up our hands and say, “Oh, well, I tried to help him.” But when you are the one suffering, you are never satisfied with superficial solutions or anything unhelpful. Your pain drives you to keep studying Scripture, keep asking advice, keep praying, and keep seeking hard after God until you find comfort that is real comfort. And it is then that you will be able to help others. When you meet someone who is suffering in that same way you will bypass the superficial solutions that didn’t work for you and go right to the solution that succeeded in bringing you near to God.

God’s attributes are appreciated in proportion to our suffering and neediness. No one has the capacity to love and delight in God’s compassion and comfort more than the person who has been deeply hurt. No one can rejoice in God’s guidance more than the person who has been hopelessly lost or confused. It is when we are unfairly treated that we can especially love God’s justice. It is when we are crushed by guilt, or when others refuse to forgive us that we can most appreciate His forgiveness. When we are fatigued beyond the breaking point we can truly understand how delightful His rest and refreshment and strengthening is. And those who have been through terrorizing danger can see the glory of God’s shelter and refuge.

All of our sufferings are keys to unlock wonderful truths we could never otherwise find. There are principles in God’s Word that can only be found by the most earnest seeking, and in many cases the only thing capable of driving us to seek with sufficient earnestness is intense pain. So when God gives us pain we can look forward to the sermon or study that will have the truths that will be unlocked by that particular key. May we not lose the keys by salving over the pain with some kind of anesthesia that derails His purposes in our pain.

What effect would it have on your heart if you were to consciously experience God’s comfort today?
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Experiencing this attribute:
When you suffer, remind yourself that it is crucial that you find joy in God not only because that glorifies God as the great Satisfier of the soul, and not only because God calls you to live a life of real (not pretend) joy, but also because the joy of others in the future is riding on whether or not you have success in finding comfort in this suffering.

Think: What suffering is there in your life that you have not yet found the way to joy in God that is greater than the suffering?

Promise to trust today:
Psalm 50:15 Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.

Write your own prayer:

Compassion (contd)

36)    Meditation 2: His comfort is enough for joy

2 Corinthians 1:3-5 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.

What is wonderful about this attribute:
What a beautiful description of God: “The Father of compassion and God of all comfort.” All compassion has God as its source and gets its characteristics from God. Any act of mercy, any soothing of the troubled soul, gets its DNA from God – whether it comes directly from God or through a person or event. The same is true of comfort. It is God’s nature to restore peace and joy to the anxious heart.

What effect would it have on your heart if you were to consciously experience God’s compassion and comfort today?
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Experiencing this attribute:
Comfort in times of distress is not automatic. If it were, there would be no distress. And there certainly would not be such a thing as suicide. Many Christians have begged God for comfort for years and are still in the depths of despair or depression. So the question of how to experience this attribute is a very important one.
Perhaps the most common reason why we fail to receive comfort from God lies in our failure to wholeheartedly seek Him. We so quickly revert to the band-aids of temporal comforts instead. We use the pleasures of life as anesthesia to deaden the pain. Food, sleep, TV, books, relationships, hobbies, pills – anything we can find to either soften the pain or distract our minds from it.

When your soul is troubled, your craving for comfort is the thirst of the soul. Comfort and joy are like water, and a distressed soul is like a dry throat. And according to Jeremiah 2:13 the only spring capable of satisfying the thirst of the soul is the presence of God. And any other thing we look to for comfort (food, TV, etc.) is a dry cistern that cannot hold water. Those things can give some momentary pleasures, and they can mask the pain for a time, but they cannot satisfy the thirst of the soul. They are like taking aspirin for cancer. They can deaden some of the pain, but they do nothing to solve the problem.

The problem of a despairing or dried up soul is solved only by drinking deeply from the presence of God. In fact everything we need comes to us when we experience the presence of God. And for that reason it is a great gift when God sends suffering – suffering that is painful enough that opens your eyes to the bankruptcy of all the dry cisterns of this world and drives you to seek after nearness to God with all your heart and all your soul. Very often the normal aches and pains of life are not enough to drive us to desperate seeking. We are content to simply endure them, and continue on with minimal joy. But profound, acute, deep pain is like thirst that cannot be ignored even for a moment, and that drives us to find water at absolutely any cost.

Interpret pain in your life as an invitation to come to the Fountain. God is calling you to draw near, and He is promising mercy and compassion and comfort. Pull out all the stops in your seeking after Him. Take an extended time to pursue Him with intense, focused determination. Go to a special place with your Bible and a book or two that will help you draw near to His presence. If possible, make it a place where you can experience the beauty of the creation. Make a day or weekend of it if you can. Listen to some good worship music. Write a psalm that expresses the deepest longings of your heart and offer it to God like a sacrifice. Fast, and let each hunger pang remind you that the food and drink you are seeking right now will be so wonderfully satisfying to your soul when you find it.

It is not always possible to get away for an extended time of seeking after God (though it is more than worth making some sacrifices for). When you can’t get away, do all you can to seek nearness to Him in your daily routine. The presence of God is always available to the believer, and it is always sufficient to give you a joy that is greater than your trouble – always. So let every feeling of anxiety remind you of the sufficiency of the presence of God for joy. Each time you have a feeling of anxiety or distress, let that trigger this thought process: “God is right here with me at this moment. What else do I need besides Him? Why is His being near me right now not enough to satisfy my soul? It is only because I am not experiencing His presence.”

Oh Lord, I believe Your presence is more than enough to satisfy the thirst of my soul and to give me real joy. I believe that; help my unbelief. These things that are bothering me – annoyances, inconveniences, inconsiderate or hostile people, sins committed against me, irritations, unfaithful people, shoddy work, lack of _______________; dear God – of what importance are those things compared to Your glory? If I have You I don’t need the removal of any of those things to be happy. You are enough. I am unhappy right now only because I am blind to Your presence. Please, dear Lord, open Your servant’s eyes and make me able to appreciate the marvelous wonder of what I have right now – the living God right here with me right now.

Think: What do you think God wants you to do today to increase your enjoyment of the Spring of living water?
Promise to trust today:
2 Corinthians 1:3-4 … the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 … comforts us in all our troubles

Psalm 23:4 Even when I go through the darkest valley, I fear no danger, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff– they comfort me.

Write your own prayer:

Attribute #12– The Father of Compassion and God of all Comfort

35)    Meditation 1: Compassion like a father

Psalm 103:13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; 14 for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.

What is wonderful about this attribute:
The LORD is the God who listens and cares, not just like a king but like a father. What force in this world is more powerful than that of the concern a father has on his children when they are in real trouble?

As imperfect human fathers we sometimes fail to realize how fragile our children are at certain points. We forget that they are weak, and we impose burdens on them too heavy to bear. We expect them to be more than dust and we are disappointed when they are not. God is not like that. He never forgets that we are dust. He never places a burden on you that you cannot bear. He never overloads you or fails to give you strength equal to your task on a certain day. We worry and fret over getting everything done when we are behind in our work, and we feel we can’t possibly do all that we should. But that is not true. God does not call us to do that which we cannot accomplish by His grace. He is the very essence and definition of gentleness and tenderness. He knows exactly what you are made of and what you can do.

Lord, You have compassion on me when I am confused, and You teach me. You have compassion on me when I am tempted and You provide a way out. You have compassion on me when I am tired and You give me strength. You have compassion on me when I am deceived, and You give me light. You have compassion on me when I am in pain, and You comfort me and heal me. You have compassion on me when I have done irreversible, horrible damage through sin and rebellion against You, and You forgive me, separating my sin from me as far as the east is from the west. You have compassion on me when I am wronged and You bring justice. What an amazing thing that the Almighty King of the Universe would feel pain in His heart over my little trials!
What effect would it have on your heart if you were to consciously experience God’s fatherly compassion today?
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Experiencing this attribute:
Learn to enjoy God’s compassion. The world thinks it is better to be envied than pitied. But anyone who thinks that has never felt God’s pity or compassion. It would be better to suffer the severest pain and torment with God’s pity than the greatest thrill or pleasure apart from His pity.

Beware of the lies of the enemy. Satan will try to tell you that you have failed too often, and God’s compassion is growing thin. If our children get sick or injured that causes us to have more compassion, not less. God does not get frustrated with you when you are more needy. The needier you are the more compassion He has. The needier you are the more glorified He is as His infinite resources are seen all the more gloriously. The sicker the child the more tightly the mother holds it to her chest, and the more carefully she cares for it. Therefore boast all the more joyfully about your weaknesses. When you are weak, then you are strong. Better to be sick and clutched to His chest than well anywhere else.
Like a loving father God is pleased by our inadequate efforts. A father teaches his three year old son to shoot a bow, the kid pulls with all his might on the string and sends the arrow only five feet, yet he is praised by his dad. We long to grow and mature and send that arrow much further, and we joyfully anticipate the day when His Spirit will enable us to do that, but for now enjoy His pleasure in your little three foot shots!

When a toddler first learns how to talk, the father listens with utmost intensity to what he says. And he praises the child even for the most improper syntax – just for being able to say a word or string two or three together. As you are learning to pray, enjoy the fact that you are praying to a Father like that. We should not remain babies all our lives, and we should strive to learn to really converse with Him in deep ways as we pour out our hearts to Him, but for right now learn to revel in the fact that you are the son of a God who listens like a father. Let the hunger and thirst for that draw you to prayer more and more. Work hard, like a child who is so eager to learn to communicate with his parents.

Think: Spend some time thinking about what it feels like when you have deep compassion for someone. Then think about that feeling amplified to the greatest extreme you can conceive of, and take delight in the fact that God feels that for you right now.

Promise to trust today:
Psalm 103:13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; 14 for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.

Write your own prayer:

Attribute #11– Vindicator

34)    Meditation:
Psalm 23:5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.

God has promised to vindicate us in the sight of our enemies. All those times when there was a conflict and you were in the right – God will someday make it known that you were in the right. And He will do it by means of personal association and blessing. He will show you to be in the right by standing by your side and blessing you in the presence of your opponents. When the time is right God will let those people see His favor upon you, and He will do it in a way that will make your cup overflow with joy.

What is wonderful about this attribute:
This attribute is wonderful for at least two reasons. First, because God will vindicate you. All the times of unfairness in your life – when you did not receive the credit you deserved, when you were blamed for something that was not your fault, or when you were in the right but others were convinced you were in the wrong – God will make all that right. He will make your rightness in those cases shine as clearly and conspicuously as the sun in the sky (Psalm 37:6). And He will undo the damage that was done by your accusers.

Secondly, God will do this in a marvelous way. He will do it not just by making an announcement or sending out a memo, but by drawing you close to Him in family fellowship, honoring you by bringing you into His own house and seating you at His own table, and by pouring out favor and blessing upon you in front of everyone. He welcomes you into His home with the refreshment of oil and the hospitality and generosity of a cup filled to overflowing. God has promised to honor you by drawing you close to Him and acknowledging you as a servant with whom He is greatly pleased. What a marvelous way to be vindicated! With His great hand on your shoulder He will announce to everyone: “He/She is with Me!”

What effect would it have on your heart if you were to consciously experience God’s vindicating love today?
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Experiencing this attribute:
Two important aspects of experiencing this attribute stand out. One is waiting and the other has to do with interpreting times of favor.

With regard to waiting – we experience this attribute of God by trusting Him to do this, and by taking delight in the fact that we can trust Him to do it (Psalm 37:1-11). The alternative to waiting is to try to bring about your own vindication. If you focus on making sure everyone thinks well of you right now you can forfeit what God promises. Just be patient, and let the Lord worry about repairing your reputation.

Secondly, interpret times of vindication (favor and blessing) for what they are. When there is fairness in your life – you receive the credit that is due, or are vindicated in some way; instead of just accepting it as a matter of course, realize that it is an act of God. You are, at that moment, experiencing one of the attributes of God! And if you enjoy it as such you will be having fellowship with God – fellowship that will increase your love for Him.

Think: Spend a few minutes thinking of some instances of fairness that you have experienced – when God showed others that you were in the right, or when you received credit you deserved. Those were experiences of this attribute of God.

Promise to trust today:
Psalm 37:5-7 Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: 6 He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. 7 Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him

Psalm 23:5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.

Write your own prayer: